“Need a tent? Need kitchen stuff? Need clothes? Need any kind of tin ever put in a store?
Need crutches? Need kid stuff? Need a clock radio, or a half of a Christmas Tree?
You just THINK Walmart has it all. Come see us today at Kip Deaton's benefit garage sale.
Starts at 8, will probably last ALL day! 24th & Alameda in Norman….
Come On Down!~” –moms facebook status @ 6:43a
Organizing a garage sale was completely foreign to me until recently. My friends raised a ton of money at their benefit garage sale so I wanted to try it out- I mean, how hard could it be?…
So I made the donation flyers, posted them on facebook, emailed friends and families and then the donations started rolling in. At first it was just a corner of moms garage… Then the wall… Then the other wall… Then the shed… Until it got so out of control that I had to start putting stuff into grams garage… then Lacey’s. So to sum it up, I had A LOT of stuff… TONS of stuff… Boatloads of stuff…okay you get the point.
part of moms garage, just enough craziness to give a middle-aged woman a heart attack
notice the christmas tree, mom wasn't kidding, we really had half a christmas tree
So I finally start organizing, a week of sweat-drip-and pain spent in these garages. Until finally Friday night, (The garage sale is Sat morning) Friday night around 9p my sister gets home and I’m having a melt down in my room. I can’t find my construction paper, half of the stuff isn’t priced, moms tired from working all day, I’m tired from working all day, no one is going to come tomorrow, I’m not going to make any money because everything is 25cents, etc, etc. …but never mind the meltdown; Lacey comes and saves my day. We go back to moms and make the signs and continue to price moms garage until we finally call it a night.
our pricing system, green dots 25cents, pink 50..etc, etc.
Well the big day finally comes. Saturday morning. The moment of truth. The garage sale starts at 8a so we start unloading everything out of the garages around 7a. About 7:15 it dawns on me that I forgot to check my email to verify the craigslist listing. No one is even going to know about the garage sale because it isn’t posted yet!!! Eeekk. ..and I didn’t put a listing in the newspaper (because I’m too cheap to pay the $17) So I run inside and no worries, it was finally posted.
About 7:45 Brad and I go put out the signs and when we get back the first shoppers have arrived.
Grams at her house manning her station, mom and lace are still organizing moms garage and frantically pricing things that we hadn’t priced the night before. And I go to the ‘launch pad’ what I call it (really it’s just a side driveway thing that mom has. ) Anyway, the beginning was a little shaky, unorganized and hectic so by 9a we’re all sweating our tatas off. Finally reinforcement comes, Janice, moms friend, so we’ve got 5 people now working the most massive garage sale I’ve ever seen.
that's my sister in the hat still pricing
So what have I learned about garage sales?:
-it’s a full commitment, kind of like getting a tattoo on your face
-if the item is priced $5 people will barter you down to $3 and then pay with a 5, really? I think I’ll keep the $2 change punk, thanks.
-someone really will buy half of a Christmas tree if the price is right
So now, the exciting part, How much did I make??
Drum roll please, $1196.60!!!!
….and I still have a garage and a half full of stuff, so I’ll be reorganizing, repricing, resweating all over again next week. …and it’ll be worth it.
A special thank you to everyone who donated their belongings to make this garage sale a major success! Also a thank you to everyone who stopped by to hug my sweaty self and scope out the million random items we had!
I still have a long way to go until I reach the $14,000 mark, but I'm learning every little bit adds up! Thank you for everyones continued support, this has been a learning process and I get overwhelmed easily thinking about everything, but overall I'm so excited to have this opportunity and really appreciate everything!
